Ex-Russian army officer questioned as suspect in Chechen
murders

09.06.2009

MOSCOW, June 9 (RIA Novosti) - A former Russian army
colonel who killed an 18-year-old Chechen woman, has been
interrogated as a suspect in the murder of three other Chechen
residents, Russian investigators said on Tuesday.

Yury Budanov, who commanded a tank regiment during the
second Chechen war, was convicted in the summer of 2003 of
strangling 18-year-old Elsa Kungayeva three years earlier and
was sentenced to 10 years in jail. He was paroled in January
2009.

"In 2000, 18 Chechen residents were illegally detained at
an outpost at Duba-Yurt of Chechnya's Shali District. Three of
them were later found dead. A number of locals claim that Yury
Budanov...was behind the murder. Budanov denied his involvement
during interrogation," the investigation committee at the
Russian Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement.

Investigators said they would conduct a number of DNA
tests and question the other detainees, victims' relatives and
witnesses of the alleged crime.

The case was reopened earlier this year after several
Chechen residents filed a document stating that Budanov was
involved in the abduction and murder of the three people.

The document said that Budanov himself stopped the car
containing the victims and took them away and their bodies were
later discovered. The relatives of the people killed had
identified Budanov from television reports and photographs in
the press.